Providing your best time in the Amazon - ------www.gilserique.com---------

Tuesday, 24 February 2009

On the River by Gil Serique

Chapter IIAs an infant born in the Amazon Basin my obvious favorite toy waspaper boats. Making, loading and carefully placing them on run outs ofAmazon storms made my heart bit faster and threw my imagination beyondthe wall.Being raised in a region that holds 80% of all navigable fresh waterin the planet, highest rain precipitation, huge bio mass and adiversity of hardwood species without parallel explain it. Add to thatour very limited access to machine-made toys.Boys with skills to build boats of wood with a little motor wereadmired by all.A rumor about someone making a new wooden-boat travelled for free inmy childhood.We did not need a bottle of champagne to make the first floating a bigevent, we had the rain water to swim and dive making the party aparty.Happiness and my mother's beats on our way back home keep it quitevivid in my own mind.The palm tree family represented by some 100 species is unquestionedof great importance in our culture and lives.We use palm trees as source of food, on the making of quite ingeniousinstruments, traps, weapons, baskets, boat roof and above all ourhomes and hammocks. There is one species named Buruti that means thegift of the gods.Several of the best little boats was made of part of palm trees. Theyfloated long distances in fast run outs caused by heavy Amazon rainstorms.I have an extra reason to list up paper boats as favorites. I was bornin a little village up the Tapajos River called Surucua where someother fifty families shared with us a paradisiacal life and anisolation that would be only break by an 8-hour boat trip to Santarem. I traveled bellied in my mother and did many trips to Santarem as a child.Boats always had a significant importance in my life. There was alwaysone ready for evacuating a person in need of; Rescued my siblings fromSantarem and my daddy from his frequents trips to villages and citiesbringing toys and joys into my child's heart.Frankly, the cabocos that could identify boats by their engine breathhad almost as much prestige as good fisherman or hunter at Surucua.Childhood's end!

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Gil Serique: Culture, Windsurf & Wildlife In the Amazon
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